


Absolute Zero

by Windian



Series: The Blizzard and What Came After [1]
Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: Gen, Subtext, also flashbacks with the littlies, copious amounts of father issues, you can read it as platonic if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8750473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: An avalanche traps Asbel and Hubert together on Mt Zavhert.Naturally, it takes hypothermia and a near-death experience to get his little brother to open up about anything.





	

Perched precariously on the lip of the hill, Hubert wasn't entirely sure why he'd gotten himself into this situation.

His head span with a dizzy vertigo as he peered over the edge of the toboggan: down the sharp incline, over the frozen river-- towards, it seemed, certain death.

His mouth was dry, and Hubert swallowed. Fear lent a high whine to his voice: “Asbel, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Of course! Joby and I sledged down here a bazillion times last year. It'll be fine.” His brother's confident voice swung in closer as Asbel took his place in the seat beside him, legs cramped up next to his own. “You're not chickening out on me, are you?”

“O-of course not!” Hubert said, too loud, voice splitting like a fissure in ice.

This then, admittedly, was the reason why. Asbel was always leaving him behind, forgetting him. He pretended he was happy to read alone, or spend time indoor with Cheria, but...

“Good! Then let's go.”

Asbel kicked off, and they started to move. Hubert's courage deserted him. Asbel was holding loosely to his waist. The words caught in his throat: hold onto me! Don't let go! But then the air was whipping around them, his brother's laughter raucous at his ear, a board clipping and splintering away from the toboggan, and--

Asbel had let go.

 

***

 

Seven years.

Seven years had passed since Hubert had seen snow. Strahta rarely received rainfall, let alone the temperatures cold enough to produce ice.

Leaning over the starboard, Velanik port could be seen in the distance. The first tufts of snow, alighting on Hubert’s shoulders and settling in his hair, wrenched him back. For a few moments, he wasn’t Lieutenant Oswell, but Hubert Lhant. As though he were a boy again, he raised his raised his hands, to catch the snowflakes in his palms. Velanik port vanished beneath the snow: Hubert thought of Aston shoveling the garden, of Lhant covered over in white like icing on a christmas cake. He thought of the carefree days, building snowmen and snow angels.

“Hubert? There’s powder falling from the sky.”

Sophie’s voice startled him: pulling him back not only from his daydream, but from another self.

He cleared his throat. “It’s not powder, Sophie. It’s snow.”

“Is it dangerous?”

He couldn’t help but hook a smile. “No more than my bad eye sight.”

He also thought of the last winter before he was shipped out to Strahta, spent in his bedroom recovering from a broken leg after a toboggan accident, and that smile faded.

Cautiously, Sophie held out her hands to capture a snowflake. “I feel like… I’ve seen something like this before.”

He turned his full attention to her. “You’ve remembered something?”

Biting her lip, Sophie shook her head. “No… it’s just a feeling. Maybe… it wasn’t me. It feels like the person I used to be remembers… does that make any sense?”

The snowfall started harder, Sophie’s eyes upturned to his, snowflakes catching in her eyelashes. She gazed up at him, unblinking.

Hubert brought a hand around her back to shepherd her into the dry. “Yes,” he said, “it does.”

 

*

 

By the time they crossed the snowfields and climbed a whole godforsaken mountain, Hubert’s feelings about snow were much less complicated.

Simply put: he couldn’t stand the stuff.

The Strahtan military uniform was simply unequipped to deal with cold temperatures and lacked the necessity for waterproofing. He imagined Fourier would prove as useful as her infernal sister,  but all the same it was all he could do to think about reaching the research lab and getting out of the cold.

Yet the rest of the group, if anything, seemed to drag their heels, and before too long, Hubert had lost them entirely.

The idea of leaving Asbel Lhant behind would have seemed laughable, once. And yet, Asbel was as little of the boy he knew as he was himself. He’d shucked aside his timidity like an unwanted, too-short coat. Asbel’s childhood brashness, however, had burnt out. His moments of determination came in hot, short flushes. Quickly, they burnt down, and Asbel hesitated, he dithered, he did nothing. And it was Hubert instead, who found himself picking up the slack.

As much as Hubert despised his brother’s wild recklessness, this new hesitance, this weakness, he found he couldn’t abide.

“I just feel like Richard is suffering while we’re running around in circles.” Asbel eyes were downcast, cheeks reddening and flushed against the punishing wind.

In the days gone by, there would have been no hesitance. He would have made a decision. He would have acted. But as Asbel spoke, he couldn’t even meet his gaze. And it was maddening. The heat of anger rose in Hubert, a relief against the cold and his brother’s damnable passivity.

“Richard is suffering? I can’t even begin to fathom what you’re talking about,” he spat.

But Asbel dithered. There has to be some reason why Richard is acting the way he is, he continued to protest. This isn’t what he wanted.

It sounded, Hubert thought, as though Asbel was trying very hard to convince himself.

“I care not for his reasons. If King Richard does not put a stop to his current behaviour, then I will be forced to kill him myself.”

Asbel’s eyes clashed up against his, dragged from his stupor: shocked, hurt, angry.

Good, Hubert thought.

“Hubert! No!” A spark of his old self in him as he declared, “I refuse to think like that. If that’s your outlook, then I’ll just prove to you that I can stop him.”

But as Asbel turned his back on him, Hubert wanted to ask: how?

He wanted to hurt their old friend as little as Asbel did, but the cold fact was that people changed. Richard wasn’t the boy he used to be.

And for that matter, neither he or Asbel were, either.

 

*

 

For the first month, Hubert had cried himself to sleep.

The boat had made him pitiably seasick. In the desert, his eyes constantly watered and burned under the bright glare of the sun. In his books, the idea of a desert had sounded marvellous. In reality, it was hot and horrible, and he’d hated the unsteady way the sand gave underneath his feet. It felt as though the very foundation he stood upon was crumbling beneath him.

He was no longer a Lhant, yet he didn’t yet know what it was to be an Oswell. So, who was he?

For that first month, Hubert still held out hope. Face first in his soggy pillow, he expected to feel his mother’s gentle comforting hand brushing through his hair, telling him he was fine. He longed to hear Asbel’s voice, from the twin bed that sat faraway, in another country. Even if it was to tell him to stop being such a wuss and boys don’t cry.

Surely, he thought, his parents would realise they’d made a mistake. There was no way they’d really leave him here, in this city that was as alien to Lhant as the bottom of the ocean. They loved him, didn’t they? It wasn’t his fault they’d sent him away, was it?

His teachers at the expensive Libertan academy told his adoptive father that their newest pupil wasn’t “settling in well.” He was shy. Non-communicative. Even when he knew the answers, he didn’t raise his hand.

The fact was: without his brother’s shadow to hide behind, Hubert didn’t know how to make friends. His adoptive father began to grow impatient with him: this was the product that had been described.

Maybe Hubert didn’t deserve friends.

Sat with a book on history that would have fascinated him, once, Hubert’s eyes refused to focus. He thought: maybe that was why his parents had thrown him away. They already had brave, fearless Asbel. What would they need with a useless crybaby who was afraid of his own shadow?

After that first month, Garett Oswell made a decision.

One day, his adoptive father took him to the Oswell family vault. The day was hotter than usual, throwing long, dark shadows across the sand, still unsteady beneath Hubert’s feet. He could feel himself sweating already, clothes clinging uncomfortably to skin too pale for the desert.

His new father put a pair of dual blades into his hands. Told him, in the voice that seemed to Hubert always ice-cold, without warmth, “Hubert. I’m going to hit you now. I want you to hit me back.”

Garett Oswell drew his own sword. Hubert’s hands were hot and sticky, holding the unfamiliar blades loosely and clumsily. “W-what? Why?”

Before he could make any further protest the blow of the blunted blade grazed against the side of his arm, another against his side.

“S-stop! Why are you doing this?” Hubert backed away, but Garett matched him, step for step.

“Defend yourself!” Garett said.

In his panic, Hubert had nearly forgotten the heavy blades he held loose in his hands. He raised them out of instinct, the shriek of metal ringing out as he blocked Garett’s blow. He was so surprised that the next attack took him so hard he was knocked straight off his feet.

Hubert’s cheek was bruised, and he could feel his shoes full of grainy sand.

“Get up, Hubert. We’re not finished yet.”

Hubert knew now there was no use questioning why.

He matched Garett’s swings, his movements becoming steadier, less clumsy, adjusting to the shifting sands beneath him. After some time he was catching the majority of Garett’s blows: in some ways, it was easy, a kind of puzzle to unravel. Watching Garett’s movement, and predicting what he was going to do next.

Yet his breath came hot and fast, sweat soaking through the shirt on his back. Just when he thought Garett might be satisfied, he took another step forward.

“Defending yourself isn’t enough, Hubert. I asked you to hit me.”

He’d been going easy on him all this time. Hubert, his muscles, his bruised flesh— he burned all over.

“I don’t want to!” he protested. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I won’t stop attacking until you attack me back, Hubert. Pretend I’m someone you hate. Someone you want to hurt. And strike out.”

But, hate? Hubert didn’t hate anyone. And yet…

There were times when Garett’s cool disinterested air reminded him of his own father. If Hubert could call him that anymore, after Hubert had been thrown away.

It was at this point that Hubert would ordinarily skulk away, find a quiet place to weep. But his abandonment— Aston, so casual! Not even shedding a tear as he bid his son onto the boat!—  and this awful hot place, with Garett’s incessant blows— the indignity of all Hubert had suffered was too much.

“I hate you, Dad!” The words came from deep inside of him, from some deep well of anger whose depths Hubert had never plumbed. He lashed out, the clumsy force of the swing so fierce Garett barely deflected it.

Thinking of his father led him to thinking of his mother, who claimed to have loved him, and who had lied. I hate you! He shouted. And thinking of his parents made him think of Asbel, who he’d always looked up to, who was always better than him—

No, who’d always thought he was better than Hubert. His brother, who teased him and forgotten him— and was probably far happier without him.

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Hubert rained incessant blows, until his dual blade went clattering out of his hand. He shrunk down, pulling his knees to his face, expecting the tears to come, as they always did.

Yet, somehow, it seemed like over the last month he’d cried himself out. His eyes were dry. He felt like one of the sand sculptures he’d seen on their trip into the city: still, dry, empty.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I don’t…” hate you, he’d been about to say, but that was a lie. Garett probably knew it too, from the dry chuckle he heard.

Then Garett did something he’d never done before, and put a hand upon Hubert’s head. “You did well, Hubert. I’m proud of you.”

Hubert raised his head from the rough material of his trousers. A few weeks ago he would have done anything for this piece of comfort, but now, the words fell through his fingers like sand.

“Thank you, father,” he said.

“Now raise your head, Hubert. Push your shoulders back. No Oswell walks with his eyes to the ground.”

 

*

 

Strange. The texture was different, but somehow the snow beneath Hubert’s feet reminded him of the shifting sands in his first days in Strahta, before he’d learnt to steady himself.

But perhaps it was he himself who was losing traction, he thought. As they headed down the mountain, back to Zavhert, on yet another endless seeming errand, his brother fell into step with him.

“You look cold, Hubert,” he said, with a sympathetic smile. An obviously blatant statement.

“I won’t be warm until we leave this forsaken country,” he said, and Asbel laughed.

“Me neither. I would kill just to have dry feet,” his brother said. “Hey, do you remember when were kids, that year the river froze over? When we figured it was a good idea to toboggan down across it?” His brother was still smiling, inviting him in on the joke.

The words caught behind his gums: don’t pretend we can talk about before.

But he swallowed the thought before it could form, and pressed harder through the snow. Asbel increased his pace to keep steady with him, ignorant as ever.

“I mean, do you remember what that thing was made of? When we ran out of screws we just used glue,” Asbel laughed.

Yes, hilarious, thought Hubert. I almost died. What a lark.

Hubert walked fast, striding through the snow. But Asbel easily kept pace with him, until they’d left Cheria, Malik, Sophie and Pascal far behind.

“And oh man, rubber bands. And then we were surprised when it fell apart.”

Hubert stopped suddenly, so that Asbel lurched forward several steps before he noticed.

“ _We_ ,” said Hubert.

Asbel turns back. “Hubert?” he asked, eyebrows drawn together.

Hubert’s hands were gripped hard, the crescent moons of his nails biting into palms, so cold he couldn’t even feel it. “You said, _we_. Asbel, I don’t think you’re recalling this correctly. There was no, _we_. As usual, this was another of your foolish ideas you dragged other people into, and left the rest of us to deal with the consequences.” Hubert spat the words with enough viciousness of a slap.

And Asbel stood, as dazed in the snow as though he’d been struck. In his eyes, reflected back, Hubert saw the catacombs, and a group of children. He and Cheria had been struck, and he’d seen Asbel, reaching out—

Colour rose high in his cheeks. “Asbel, wait. I misspoke—”

“No. You’re right,” Asbel’s voice was deep with old pain. “You were always the smart one, Hubert. And I was—”

“No,” said Hubert, reaching out for his brother’s shoulder, pushing against that familiar hesitance. Once, it would have been easy to offer comfort. To grab his brother and pull him to him. But this Asbel who was half his brother and half a stranger…

Before he could process his thoughts any further, a low rumble echoed down through the mountain. The sound grows into a fierce crashing, and dimly he hears Asbel call: _avalanche._

But he feels frozen to the ground. He’s lost his footing. Hubert stands, useless and immobile, until his brother wrenches him by the arm and drags him, as the noise builds into a cacophony. Hubert can see nothing but a blur and Asbel is pushing him, yelling, Hubert, hurry. Dimly, Hubert sees a cave— more of an alcove, set into the bedrock. Then he’s falling, the cold shock of snow on his face, a heavy weight smothering him, and he thinks it’s over, until he realises it’s Asbel, covering him with his body.

And everything turns white.

 

*

 

In the darkness of the catacombs, Hubert had woken to yelling. There were footsteps and voices, the panicked edge to them dragging Hubert’s consciousness forcibly back to the surface.

Suddenly an image of the monster who’d attacked them flickered back into his mind: dark and twisted and warped as it had lashed out and him and Cheria. Hubert’s eyes flew open in a panic, but he still couldn’t vanish the image of the monster seared onto the back of his retinas.

Something was holding him, and with the image of the monster’s sinuous fingers still in his mind, Hubert panicked, writhing and twisting against its grip, trying to break free.

“Hubert, it’s okay! It’s me, your father. You’re safe now.” At the familiar sound of his father’s voice, Hubert’s struggling ceased. He looked up at Aston, eyebrows pinched together, eyes filled with tears, carrying him as he did when Hubert was a much younger child. And just as he did when he was little, Hubert threw his arms around his father’s neck and buried his face in his shoulder and cried.

“It’s ok, Hubert. It’s ok,” Aston said again, rubbing circles against Hubert’s back.

When he managed to raise his eyes and look over Aston’s shoulders, it was to see Asbel in a stretcher, being carried away. His heart rose to his chest, a horrible feeling of panic suffocating his insides.

“Asbel!” he called. When it occurred to him, “And Cheria and Richard! And—”

“Everything will be fine, Hubert,” Aston said, fiercely. “I promise.”

Slowly, as Asbel was taken away out of sight, up the stairs to the castle, Hubert let the panic settle back down into his gut. He pressed his face to the scratchy material of his father’s coat, drinking in his words like a medicine. Everything would be fine, because his father promised. He forgot all about the adoption, and the boat scheduled the next day to take him away, and closed his eyes against everything.

“Lord Aston? I’m sorry, but the girl told me there was supposed to be another child with them. We can’t find her…”

 

*

Adults, Hubert had learnt that day, lied.

 

*

Pushing his eyes open was a struggle. Blearily pushing his way back to alertness, Hubert was surprised to find himself staring at a wall of ice.

A cave?

“Hubert, you’re awake.”

“I think so,” said Hubert, pushing up the glasses which had escaped all the way down his nose, squeezing his eyes closed and opening them to rid them of the residual memories that lingered: pushing the image of the monster, and of his father, away.

God, it was cold.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Some kind of alcove off the mountainside, I guess,” said Asbel. He was sat across from him, lighting the little eleth lamp. “We’re lucky. I thought it was going to carry us all the way down the mountain.”

Lucky. That was one word for it, Hubert supposed. The avalanche that must have saved their lives had also condemned them. The entrance of the alcove had completely vanished behind hard-packed snow and a fallen tree, carried down the mountainside. A thin crack of light sifted in through the ceiling, too high for either of them to reach.

Despite the cold, heat rose in Hubert’s face as he recalled how he’d froze on the ice. All his training, all his practice in the field— and he hadn’t been able to move. He’d frozen solid.

For those few vital seconds, he hadn’t been Lieutenant Oswell, but a boy again.

Hubert glanced over at his brother,  huddled in on himself against the cold.

“I take it you’ve already attempted an escape?” Hubert asked.

“The snow’s packed too thick, and I have no idea how far we’d have to dig,” Asbel said, nodding to a pathetic hole in the packed snow, a broken spoon embedded in it.

“So what do we do?” Hubert asked, trying to fight down the rising panic in his throat. An Oswell did not panic.

“I guess we hope the others come to save our butts,” Asbel said, with a shrug.

Slowly, Hubert nodded. He did not voice the idea that that their friends might be a similar predicament, or worse. The option was simply too grim.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Asbel said, too loud. “I mean, Pascal could burn away the snow with her artes, right?”

Hubert said nothing. The cold, and the isolation pressed in on him. He pushed his mind back, instead, to the survival skills he’d learnt in the military. “We should access our situation. If we have no means of escape, what are our supplies? How long can we last out here?”

Asbel removed his elbow from the pack he was leaning on. “Five apple gels. Two orange gels. The dodgy lamp. Can of pickled plums…”

“The eleth mixer?”

“No. Damn. Pascal was holding onto it. Was after a banana pie. We could have had it spit out a shovel or something.” Asbel rooted further through his pack. “No wonder my pack felt so heavy. Geez.” He pulled out a jug that clearly comprised of Captain Malik’s secret stash— some hard looking Fendel liquor.

Hubert put his head in his hands. “That man’s priorities. Unbelievable.”

“At least we won’t go thirsty,” Asbel said, with a crooked smile.

“Alcohol dehydrates you, actually.”

Asbel put the jug away, and tore off the ring pull of the can. “Pickled plum, then?”

Sourly, Hubert took one. Crunching down, he pulled a face. “These are just as bad as I remember.”

“You never used to turn down Joby’s grandma though, did you?” Asbel said.

“Well, it would be rude.” He swallowed, wrinkling his nose. “Why on earth did you pack pickled plums, of all things?”

Asbel scratched at the back of his neck. “Uh. Well, they’ve kind of been in my pack since Lhant. I, uh, guess I couldn’t say no to her, either.”

“And you carried them all way here, and up a mountain?”

“Well… it would be mean to her to throw them away, wouldn’t it?” He popped one into his mouth and bit down. “Oh man.”

Hubert shook his head. What pointless, wasteful— and bafflingly sincere behaviour.

With a start Hubert realised— that this was the first time they’d spent a substantial amount of time alone together, ever since he’d challenged Asbel, and thrown him out of Lhant.

At the time, eaten up by thoughts of revenge, about getting even, it’d been easy to justify his behaviour. Easy to build Asbel up into a villain, and not, instead, his sentimental brother who’d refused to let anger and sadness harden him, who still wrinkled his nose like he did was he was a little boy.

He tried to will the words out: I’m sorry. But Hubert had built his defenses too tall, secured his jaw too tight. “Ugh,” he said, instead.

“You alright?” asked Asbel.

“It’s nothing.”

The cold deepened. The cold from the icy floor crept up into Hubert’s bones. When he slid his sliding glasses back up his nose, he found it completely numb. He shifted uncomfortably— the icy cavern wall was too cold to lean back against.

Asbel saw him fidgeting. “Hubert, come lean up against me. We can share my pack.”

“I’m quite all right, thank you,” Hubert said curtly.

“Hubert. If we’re trapped and freezing to death, we might as well be comfortable doing it.”

Well!

“I suppose there is merit in sharing body heat,” Hubert admitted begrudgingly.

Asbel rolled his eyes. “Whatever you want to call it. Just come here.”

Awkwardly, Hubert shuffled up closer, so that they were barely touching. With a movement that sent the bottom of his stomach plummeting, Asbel hooked an arm around Hubert’s waist and pulled him closer.

“A-Asbel!” he protested in a gasp.

“C’mon, Hubert.” Asbel was smiling, but behind it Hubert saw the sadness creeping in. “This isn’t a big deal. I mean, you used to sleep in my bed every time there was a thunderstorm.”

Hubert grabbed Asbel’s hand and pushed him away. “That was a long time ago! Things are different, now.”

Asbel’s smile was gone. “Yeah… I can see that.”

Hubert, who absolutely couldn’t abide fussing, fidgeting or any kind of messing around, fiddled with the frilly ends of his collars.

“You know, a while back, Cheria said something like that to me,” Asbel said. He looked down at the ground. “You’re living in the past, Asbel! Stop seeing the things you want to see, and face reality. Or something like that. It was really harsh. But… I guess she had a point. You know, when you saved us in Lhant, I couldn’t believe it was you. You looked so cool, and those moves with the dual blades— wow! I thought, ‘Is that really my little brother?’”

Hubert bit down on his lip. He’d wanted to impress Asbel. To show him that he was no longer a weakling. That he didn’t need to rely on Asbel any longer.

But, behind that— because he wanted Asbel to be proud of him.

“I was so happy to see you again,” Asbel said. “It was just like we were kids again— you and me and Cheria, and even Sophie. I thought we could go back to how things used to be… Cheria was right. I was just living in the past. Things are different. I know that now. I spent so long thinking about joining the royal guard, getting to see Richard again. And now he—… well, what does it matter?”

Leaning back on his elbow, Asbel gazed up at the ceiling cavern, a curl of white rising from his breath. His brother, ever the optimist, looked so utterly hopeless that Hubert couldn’t contain the words: “It does matter.”

Asbel looked at him, eyebrows in his hair. “Hubert?”

Hubert bit down the flush. “I mean.” Fingers curled around the frills of his cuffs, and he took a steadying breath. “I was cold, and uncaring, and downright cruel to you, for a decision you had no part in making. I tried to take away everything from you, and you—” his voice caught. “I deserved nothing in return from you, but you repaid my cruelty with kindness. When you told me you’d speak to the president on my behalf— that you’d put yourself in such danger for me, and give up your lordship— I thought there must be some catch. That you had some ulterior motive.”

Asbel shook his head. “I was angry with you, Hubert… but you’re still my brother. That was enough.”

Hubert couldn’t raise his head. His voice ran deep. “You shamed me, Asbel. Being raised by a man like Oswell was not… easy, at times. I had forgotten that you could help someone simply because you cared for them, not in return for a transaction or bargain.”

So many things, he’d made himself forget, as fuel to fire his hatred. He’d worked so hard to convince himself that Asbel cared nought for him— that he hadn’t missed him at all. But all the same, he still hadn’t been able to convince himself to toss aside Asbel’s charm, the one he’d clutched so fiercely at his side through the first, agonizing months. That small remaining piece of Hubert Lhant— he hadn’t been able to part with.

He pushed his gaze up from the ice, to see Asbel’s face alive with emotion. Before he had a chance to stop his brother, Asbel had brought his arms around him and pulled him into an embrace. With a shock, Hubert found his face buried in Asbel’s collarbone.

“I missed you, Hubert,” Asbel said, face muffled in Hubert’s coat.

All the blood in Hubert’s body rose to his face. He tried to pull away, but Asbel held on, hard. “You don’t know how much I worried that, I don’t know, that maybe you hated me. Ha ha…” his brother laughed wetly.

His mind told him to pull away, but his instincts told him to stay. Asbel was warm, and soft, and despite the years that had passed between them, familiar.

And the high probability was that they were going to die, anyway. They might as well embarrass themselves thoroughly without retribution.

To put it more bluntly: what the hell why not.

“I missed you too,” Hubert mumbled, face flushed and splotched, muttering into the material of Asbel’s coat.

They stayed that way for some time, time melting away, Asbel’s heart beating beside his.

At last Hubert said, “We can’t go back to the way we were.”

“No…” Asbel agreed, heavily. Too much had changed, for both he and Asbel. They were both different people than they were as children.

But, perhaps, they could have something different.

When Asbel released him from his vice grip, Hubert was shivering, and not just from the cold. His breath left him in a curl of cold. Asbel grabbed his hand.

“Hubert, you feel like you’re freezing!”

“You think?” managed Hubert, from between chattering teeth.

“Budge over here. We can share my coat.”

This time, Hubert didn’t protest. His end of his nose was numb, but the ends of fingers and toes were stinging, frostbite beginning to settle in. Asbel slid one arm loose from his coat and draped it over Hubert’s shoulders. He squeezed in close.

The thin light shafting through the crack in the cave was fading. Night would soon be upon them. Hubert thought they had very little chance of living through it.

“Think the others are still looking for us?” asked Asbel.

“Possible. But I doubt they’ll find us in the dark,” said Hubert.

For some reason, Asbel smiled.

“I think the cold must be getting to you too, brother. What possible reason could you have to look happy at this prospect?”

“I was just thinking...”

“Always a bad sign.”

Asbel shot him a look, before returning to his thought. “That maybe this is for the best. Now Richard and I won’t have to cross blades again. I won’t have to hurt him.”

“Wonderful,” Hubert quipped, voice dry packed snow. “What a weight that must be off your conscience.”

“And that at least, I got to have this talk with you.”

Hubert’s sharp retort fell from his lips.

The slice of light through the ceiling slid up across the wall, darkening to a yellow and amber hue, and faded. The eleth lamp crackled, the little lump of fire eleth dwindling. Hubert’s eyes kept sweeping back to it anxiously. Though it provided little warmth, he dreaded the moment it burnt itself out, and plunged the both of them into darkness.

It was tempting just to rest his head on Asbel’s shoulder and doze into sleep-- but he knew if he did, it would be the very last time he did so.

He was drawn sharply back to attention be the bewildering sight of Asbel attempting to unlace his shoes.

“Brother, what perchance do you think you’re doing?” Even his own voice sounded strange and sluggish. This was probably bad.

“S’ too hot,” Asbel said, pulling his laces loose. Before he could actually be so foolish as to actually take off his shoes, Hubert’s hand closed around his wrist.

“Hot?” said Hubert. “Have you gone completely mad?”

“Let go, Hubert,” said Asbel, trying to pry Hubert away. But he clung on with a vice grip.

He’d read a journal, once, of the great explorer Captain Ostwick, one of the very few who’d ever ventured to the deepest part of the Fendel glaciers and returned. He recounted a baffling story: on a night so cold the icicles had frozen to their noses, the Captain’s friend had contracted hypothermia, taken all of their clothes off, complaining they were burning up, and ran out into the snow to die.

Reading the story underneath the shaded parasol of a blisteringly hot Strahtan day, Hubert had simply surmised Captain Ostwick’s friend had gone mad.

“You’re not hot, Asbel. It’s a symptom of hypothermia. If you take your clothes off, you’ll die.”

“Stop being such a worrywort, Hubert. I don’t feel cold at all,” Asbel said. His eyes clashed up against Hubert’s, and Hubert was struck by the feverish gleam in Asbel’s eyes. He released the vice grip on his wrists to press his hand against his brother’s head. He felt deathly cold.

That cold seemed to sneak inside Hubert’s bones. Asbel couldn’t die here. Not now they’d finally talked, and not now that--

Free of Hubert’s interfering grip, Asbel started to loosen his collar.

“I said, no!” Hubert seized Asbel’s hands, and crushed Asbel to his chest, to share what little body warmth he had left.

“You always did worry about me too much,” Asbel said, voice close to his ear. Chuckling.

“Because you always gave me reason,” Hubert said. With a relief, he felt Asbel stop fighting against him. Instead, he threaded his fingers through Hubert’s.

“Hey, Hubert. Later, we should go tobogganing. I bet his mountain would be great for sledging.”

“Sure, sure,” said Hubert. His brother was acting very strange, but he’d take it, if Asbel was going to stop trying to take his clothes off.

“Hey, I know that voice. Listen, I’ll build it properly this time. I’ll use nails.”

Was Asbel still thinking of that? “I was in bed all winter with that broken leg, you know.”

“And how sorry was I? I visited you every day, and I spent all my allowance on those comics,” Asbel said.

“Wait…. You did, didn’t you?”

So many things, Hubert had forgotten. Or let himself forget.

It was true that he hadn’t been able to play outside, but until he’d been able to walk again, Asbel had spent time with every day.

It’d been one of the best winters he could remember.

“So it’s a deal, then? You, me, sledging?”

Hubert’s extremities had stopped paining him. Now he just felt sleepy. And Asbel felt so soft. He leaned his head against his brother’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he said, finally giving in to oblivion. “It’s a deal.”

Perhaps he was going mad, too, because just before Hubert passed out, he could swear he heard Cheria’s voice.

_“Captain! This way. I think Asbel and Hubert are trapped. I can see a light—….”_

So much, Hubert had gotten wrong. All this time, and Asbel had never let go of him. Not really.

 

*

 

After the doctor picked up his briefcase and left for home, Asbel had poked his head around the corner, looking utterly contrite.

“Mum said I’m supposed to let you rest… but can I come in?”

Hubert pushed a pillow over his head. Asbel came in anyway. Hubert steadfastly ignored him as his footsteps padded closer and the bed sank down to accommodate him.

“I’m really sorry Hubert.”

Hubert rolled over onto his side.

“Mum’s banned me from sledging down onto the river ever again. It sucks,” Asbel told him.

“Good,” Hubert said into his pillow.

“I really am sorry,” Asbel told him again. “I didn’t think it’d be dangerous.”

Hubert didn’t reply.

“Oh man. It sucks that you’re going to ignore me. I guess I’m going to have to read all these comics I bought all by myself.”

Hubert moved the pillow away by a fraction. “…Comics?”

“Especially this sunscreen rangers, special edition 111, where they find the real evil behind the Flotillian.”

He couldn’t help himself. Hubert snuck a peek at Asbel, who’d made himself comfortable on the bed next to him, and was leafing through a huge stack of comics.

Hubert’s mouth dropped. “Where did you get all those from?”

“Spent the next three month’s allowance on them,” Asbel said. He handed Hubert a comic and his mouth continued to drop. His brother had even got the rare crossover Sunscreen Rangers comic, where the beach brigade teamed up with Uzmek the giant!

“What? Why?” he managed to ask.

“Why?” asked Asbel. “Maybe because I feel super bad that you won’t be able to come out and play while your leg’s broken. So I thought we could read these together. Which one do you wanna read first?”

The idea that Asbel had spent all his allowance on him left Hubert wordless. Instead, he reached out for the stack of comics, and began to flick through them.

“This one,” he said.

Asbel pushed himself up against the pillow, and opened the comic so that they could both see it. “Tell me when you’re done with the page, kay?”

“’Kay,” said Hubert, as he leaned up against his big brother, and together they started to read.

 

/END


End file.
